Printed and Manuscript Americana

London, 1708. First edition. 12mo. (xvi), 39 pp. Full mottled calf, red morocco spine label, stamped in gilt, front board detached but holding, extremities, joints, and boards rubbed; all edges trimmed; by The Atelier Bindery, New York; residue on front paste-down from removed label; front free endpaper partially adhered to front paste-down; text leaves trimmed close, excising some page numbers, last text leaf likely sometime supplied; repair in gutter of dedication leaf; small hole at bottom left of final text leaf, but not affecting text. Church 831; ESTC T70376 (locating 20 copies, including three noted as imperfect); Howes H-608; Sabin 19639

Very rare first edition of this polemic against the administration of Massachusetts Bay Governor Joseph Dudley (1647-1720), variously attributed to Alexander Holmes, Sir Henry Ashurst, Cotton Mather, John Wise, and Rev. John Higginson. This incisive arraignment accuses Governor Dudley, a Roxbury, Massachusetts native, of several kinds of political corruption, including bribery and participating in illicit trade with the French and her Native American allies. The tract goes on to blame him for the failed 1707 siege of Port Royal, the capital of Arcadia, New France (present day Nova Scotia), during Queen Anne's War. It concludes with a petition to the court for an investigation into Dudley's administration, "whose Arbitrary and Tyrannical Proceedings had Exposed him to the just Resentments of his Country-men..."

This only the second copy to come to auction in over 100 years. According to RBH, the last copy at auction was in the Harmsworth sale at Sotheby's in 1950, noted by them as being "Very Rare. Only one copy has been sold at auction in this country during the past 50 years."